[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I didn’t say anything about Coronation Street or things being popular
being uncreative – I’m saying it doesn't take anything exceptional to
produce much of the media content we have today. Most people could
step into a media role and produce work that is as good as what we are
served up with today.
And that is simply stupid. It's rather like saying that any monkey with
a copy of Dreamweaver can make a web site - it's true, to a degree, but
to pretend that they could produce the same results as a professional
who's spent years learning the craft involved is, frankly, dumb.
To take my own little "media role" as an example. Do you think you could
flat plan a magazine so it had pace? (For that matter, do you even know
what a flat plan is?) Commission features that were interesting,
exciting, and got people to read them? Write entertaining copy? Edit
other people's copy to a high standard? Cut copy to fit layouts? Plan
layouts that were original? Check the proofs, repeatedly? Check the
finished layouts for colour balance and accuracy? Work with printers to
ensure that they don't mess everything up?
No? Of course you couldn't - at least, not to the same standard that I
can having done it for 12 years.
There's a horrible tendency amongst some parts of the tech community to
denigrate the skills of others - and you're displaying a prime example
of that, right now. The market tells me you're wrong: because people
still pay for content, a huge amount of it.
That fact is borne out by the growth of the net and by ordinary people
having a say and doing their own things: a lot of the stuff read,
listened to, watched, etc today isn’t being produced by “media people”
it is being produced by regular people who now have access to tools
which allow them to record and share their work.
That, frankly, is nonsense. For example, more magazines are being sold
in the UK than have ever been sold before: how does that fact fit into
your view?
Try an experiment. Take a copy of FHM. Now replace every picture in it
with images from Flickr - but no professional photographers allowed. Do
you think it will be the same quality? I'd really like to so you
actually do this - because I know you couldn't.
Oh, and try another little bit of research: How many of the Top Ten
podcasts downloads in the UK on the iTunes Store are produced by these
"ordinary people" and how many are produced by professional media
outfits? Take a look, and come back with the answer for us, please. I
happen to know what it is - and I suspect you won't like it.
The ‘media’ may consider its skills as being scarce and valuable, but
they’re deluded if they think that.
So you keep saying, but you saying it doesn't make it true.
The creative industries, excluding software and R&D, contribute between
6-9% of the UK's total GDP, a figure that's consistently grown over the
past 10 years. People are consuming MORE professional media, not less.
And, to get back to my original point: Would you like to explain how all
that economic activity is going to be replaced in your copyright-free
Utopia? Or would you be prepared to shrink the UK economy by 6% because
of your ideals? If so, would you like to explain to voters why they'll
have to pay more tax - about 6% more on the basic rate - in order to
make up the difference? Or would you like to explain to the 5-6% of the
UK's workforce directly employed by the creative industries that they're
out of a job, and should all try to compensate by doing lecture tours or
something.
To put it in another context: the amount that the creative industries
contribute to the exchequer is about the same as the amount the
government spends on higher education. Like to tell me how you're going
to make up that shortfall?
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